Post-Consultation Outline - IUCN manual

Governing MPAs: a guide to getting the balance right

Dr Peter J.S. Jones, UniversityCollegeLondon and Dr Elizabeth De Santo, IUCN

Background

This document follows a consultation in June 2008 through the WCPA-Marine ‘MPA Blog’ website. It is a revision of the original consultation draft and includes further details resulting from the consultation exercise, particularly details on the case studies that will drive this analysis and a workshop to be held prior to the International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC/IMPAC2)in WashingtonDC in May 2009).

The various policy imperatives for effectively managing MPAs are clearly outlined in the proposal for the manual ‘How is your MPA managed?’ It is widely recognised that the management of MPAs involves a combination of both top-down and bottom-up approaches, but what does this mean? There are several books and manuals concerning the science of MPA management and providing frameworks for evaluation, but these are predominantly written from a natural science perspective and do not consider this question in sufficient depth to provide detailed guidance to MPA practitioners. Much of the existing guidance on managing MPAs draws on the wider management processes literature, whereby various clearly defined stages are recognised from objective setting through to evaluation, with feedback loops to promote adaptation. Such approaches are important and the developing manual ‘How is your MPA managed?’ will make a key contribution to disseminating ‘good practice’ in this respect.

Governance as a balancing act

The manual ‘Governing MPAs – a guide to getting the balance right’ focuses on a key challenge that runs throughout these stages: providing for meaningful stakeholder participation in MPA decision-making processes whilst also providing for the fulfilment of strategic marine biodiversity conservation objectives. It is premised on the view that the successful governance of MPAs essentially involves addressing basic conflicts between conserving biodiversity and exploiting marine resources. There may be ‘win-win’ synergies between these objectives but the reality is that most MPAs have to address such basic conflicts and that the main reason MPAs may not be effective in achieving biodiversity conservation objectives is that they lack the capacity to address such conflicts. Whilst the involvement of direct and indirect users of MPAs (stakeholders) is rightfully widely regarded as a key priority, it must also be recognised that in order to address such basic conflicts there often needs to be a balance between the steering, if not controlling, role of relevant authorities and the devolvement of authority to stakeholders. If an appropriate balance is not achieved there are risks that the vested interests of certain stakeholders will influence MPA management decisions to the degree that the strategic biodiversity conservation obligations are undermined.

This partially devolved mode of management, whereby the relevant authorities and stakeholders collaborate in reaching and implementing MPA decisions through partnerships, is often referred to as ‘governance’ or, in the context of protected areas and natural resource management, as ‘collaborative management’. There is a growing literature that analyses issues related toMPA governance and/or collaborative management but there has not yet been a comprehensive and systematic analysis that focuses on ‘getting the balance right’ between providing for meaningful stakeholder participation in MPA decision-making processes whilst also providing for the fulfilment of strategic marine biodiversity conservation objectives.

The proposed study is premised on the recognition that successful governance of MPAs involves a careful balancing act in relation to various challenges:-

Top-down approach / ----٨---- / bottom-up approach
Science-based approach / ----٨---- / Faith-based approach
Use of ‘expert’ knowledge / ----٨---- / Use of local knowledge
Biodiversity conservation objectives / ----٨---- / (Sustainable) resource exploitation objectives
Precautionary approach / ----٨---- / Pragmatic approach
Environmental justice / ----٨---- / Social justice

Aims of the manual

The study on which the manual will be based is focused on collating ‘good practice’ in addressing the challenge of successfully governing MPAs in variouscontexts, success being judged on the basis of ‘getting the balance right’. It recognises that MPA practitioners around the world are engaged in ‘getting the balance right’ on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis, and a variety of ‘good practice’ approaches will have been developed that are appropriate to the context of a given MPA. The study will systematically compare and analyse a representative range of MPA case studies from around the world, with the aim of:-

  • identifying examples of such good practice
  • assessing their transferability to other MPA contexts
  • producing a guide to different approaches to governing MPAs

A key focus of the study and the resulting manual will be to assess which combinations of management structures and approaches appear to represent good practice in terms of ‘incentivising’ effective MPA governance by addressing conflicts. Incentives will be analysed using categories such as the following:-

Legal incentives:

legal framework, decision-making platforms, role of authorities, approach to legal interventions, enforcement on rogue/incoming ‘freeriders’, etc;

Customary incentives:

norms, respect for decisions, peer pressure, self-enforcement, trust/social capital, etc

Interpretative incentives:

education, awareness raising, role of the media, etc

Economic incentives:

endowments, green marketing, benefits internalisation, diversification, compensation, etc

Proprietorship incentives:

assigned property rights, delegated authority, ‘ownership’, etc

Knowledge incentives:

increasing scientific certainty, collective learning, scientific arbitration panels, etc

The authors and the IUCN will collaborate to develop and flexibly apply a governance evaluation framework based on these categories of incentives in a variety of contexts. This will enable the identification of appropriate combinations of management approaches and incentives that are effective in ‘getting the balance right’ and are thereby effective in addressing the challenges of achieving strategic marine biodiversity conservation objectives whilst providing for stakeholder participation. This project could therefore be considered as representing a qualitative meta-analysis toprovide for a case study driven 'manual' on good practice in MPA governance, recognising that 'good practice' will be a combination of different governance elements/incentives that are appropriate to the context of a given MPA or network of MPAs.

It is stressed that the purpose of the study will not be to develop an auto-evaluation framework for MPAs as this has already been achieved through the manual ‘How is your MPA doing?’ Instead, the key purpose will be to:-

  • seek examples of good practice in effectively governing MPAs
  • analyse their transferability to different contexts
  • collate different approaches to such good practice.

This will complement the manual ‘How is your MPA doing?’ and the forthcoming manual ‘How is your MPA managed?’ A key challenge for MPA networks is ensuring compliance through enforcement and this manual will therefore also complement the manual on ‘Establishing MPA Networks’.

The Next Steps

The consultation yielded a great deal of support for the proposal. The following case studies have been offered as the foci of this study:-

Case Study MPA name / Country / Case Study Coordinator
Great Barrier ReefMarinePark / Australia / Jon Day, GBRMPA
Chumbe MPA / Tanzania / Sybille Riedmiller
Hon Mun MPA, Nha Trang / Vietnam / Bui Thi Thu Hein, IUCN Vietnam
Various / Where Marine Conservation Agreements have been employed / Alan White & Jay Udelhoven, The Nature Conservancy
Various / East Asia / Gaya Sriskanthan, IUCN Bangkok
Various / Philippines, Indonesia & PNG / Stuart Green
Various Marine Sanctuaries / United States / Liz Moore, Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, NOAA
California MPAs / United States / Elizabeth De Santo (IUCN), Peter Jones and Minsuk Jun, UCL
Three case studies / China / Wanfei Qiu, UCL
Cres-Losinj MPA / Croatia / Peter Mackelworth, Blue World
North-East Kent/Wash & NorthNorfolkCoast European Marine Sites / England / Tom Roberts & Peter Jones, UCL
Os Minarzos Marine Reserve / Galicia, Spain / Lucia Perez
Offshore MPAs / Various / Elizabeth De Santo

The following timeline is planned:-

End of November 2008 / Finalised list of case studies
End January 2009 / Agreement of 'case study analysis evaluative framework'
February-March 2009 / Undertake case studies
April 2009 / Compilation and analysis of the findings
May 2009 / Presentation/discussion of preliminary results at pre-conference workshop, IMPAC2
July 2009 / Circulation of draft report for feedback
September 2009 / Publication of manual